James Purnell: That picks up on the point that was being made by the Opposition Front Bench spokesman. I am committing myself to lots of meetings, but I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that.

James Purnell: I am slightly confused, because I thought that the Liberal Democrats opposed that policy. Perhaps there is a split between the Liberal Democrat spokesman for London and the Front Bench spokesman on this issue. Our policy is clear: we have listened to the concerns expressed in the House and in the other place and, as the Prime Minister said, the right thing to do is to see whether there are better forms of regeneration than a regional casino. We will be looking at that over the summer and will report afterwards. I hope that that helps the hon. Gentleman to reconcile with his Front Benchers, with whom he obviously disagrees.

James Purnell: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I gather that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) who has responsibility for sport and licensing will meet him later this week to discuss that point. Regeneration will be at the heart of those considerations. As my hon. Friend knows, the taskforce looking at his constituency and council area has already met and is due to report shortly. It has been looking at exactly that issue.

Tessa Jowell: The right hon. Gentleman has identified an important point. One aspect of the legacy that we intend for the Olympic games, quite apart from the success in building the games on budget and to time, is to change that part of London, which is characterised by local people as having very low levels of skill and therefore high levels of unemployment. Local people will have skills as a result of the job opportunities created by the Olympics. A large number of initiatives are already under way, led by the Mayor and the learning and skills council, in order to develop the skilled work force that the Olympics will require in every single respect, with a particular emphasis on increasing the skills of people through, for instance, the pre-volunteer programme. That will enable us to achieve two things: first, we will achieve a higher level of skill in east London; secondly, we will ensure that the skill match between people's skills when they look for work and the skills needed by the Olympics means that the Olympic park is constructed to budget and to time.

Hilary Benn: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman both for his appreciation of the efforts made in response to this emergency and for the spirit in which he made his remarks. I would like to pick up the points that he raised.
	First, yes, the Met Office warning was pretty clear, but as the Gold Commander told me yesterday morning in Worcester, we do not know precisely which river catchment systems the rain will fall into until it actually happens. That certainly applied in respect of the M5 and the M50. We should bear it in mind that these are relatively new motorways, built to try and accommodate the removal of surface water. That shows one of the lessons that we have to reflect on as we design such roads in the future.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to institutional confusion, but I have to say that in all my discussions, including at meetings that I have chaired and talks with the Gold Commanders in Worcester and Gloucester, I have not found any institutional confusion at all. The system in place is the Gold Command system, which has complete oversight of what is required in the areas covered. The emergency response has included the evacuation of people, bringing supplies in and providing help and support—such as offering shelter even for some motorists who found themselves trapped because they could not travel on Friday evening. All of that happened precisely because of the arrangements that have been put in place.
	On the two barriers, it is the case that temporary barriers for Upton upon Severn and Worcester could not be deployed because of traffic congestion. In the case of the Upton upon Severn barrier, I am advised by the Environment Agency that even if it had been deployed, it would have been over-topped because of the weight of the water. In the case of Worcester, it would have protected about 30 homes. I accept that one of the lessons that needs to be learned is that if there are temporary barriers, they ought to be stored in a place that will enable them to be put up quickly. I will take that thought away with me.
	The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point on the availability of water supplies. Local authorities, together with the water company and, indeed, the general public, all have a part to play in ensuring that everybody who requires water will have it made available to them. On the Mythe water treatment works, I have asked the very question that the hon. Gentleman put to me of the chief executive of the Severn Trent company when I spoke to him late yesterday evening. I have said that we will give any assistance that he requires to get access to the Mythe water treatment plant once the water level falls so that the work of repairing it can happen.
	On the Environment Agency, there has been, as the hon. Gentleman knows because we discussed this last time, no cut to the capital budget. Some feasibility studies were held back for a bit because of the reduction in the budget, but that has been made up this year. It has had no effect at all on the response to the flooding over the past month. The additional funding that I announced to the House will come on stream. The precise details will be announced once the comprehensive spending comes out. It will have to take account of the fact that as those feasibility studies come in place, there will be a programme of capital works that the Environment Agency itself will want to fund.
	I am acutely conscious of the distress caused not only to members of the public because of what has happened to their houses and businesses, but also to farmers. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the steps that I have already taken to lift the restriction on accessing water-logged land, which applies until the end of this month—I will review it in light of the current weather conditions—and to enable farmers to ask for access to set-aside land for grazing or foraging in the light of the damage caused to their crops, although many of them are still under water.
	As for looking ahead, the whole question of surface water drainage is a big one. The truth is that we are dealing with a system that has been in place for more than 150 years, and the surface water drainage system was not designed to cope with the unprecedented rainfall that we have been seeing. The most important lesson we can learn is that as we build from now on in we ensure that drainage can accommodate the flow of water that we currently see.
	As for the Bellwin rules, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that they were extended in response to the flooding that took place at the end of June. Those extensions were applied by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on Saturday to the local authorities affected. Capital work—repairs to possible damage to bridges and other structures—will be a matter for the individual Departments that are responsible for agreeing capital funding and approvals to discuss with the relevant local authorities.
	Finally, a lot of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised and the questions that I and others have got about what can be done better in future will be picked up by the review. I am grateful to him for welcoming the fact that an independent person will oversee it.

Christopher Huhne: We also wish to express our sympathy to all of those affected by the floods. They are severe and there has been an enormous amount of hardship caused for many, many people. We also wish to join in the congratulations offered to the emergency services and, indeed, to join in the pride that the House should rightly feel in their dedication and devotion to duty.
	An independent review of the lessons to be learned from these events is surely welcome. Will the Secretary of State also confirm that he intends to proceed with the strategic overview for the Environment Agency of all flood risks, which the Government announced in March 2005? There is a confusion between what has been a good set of co-ordinated responses through Gold Command by the emergency services and the much less clear response of the agencies responsible for the prevention, forecasting and warning of flooding. After all, that commitment in March 2005 was before the revolving ministerial door in the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs took its toll. Ministers should now proceed with this.
	Is it not crazy that the responsibility for preventing floods and for protecting us against flooding remains split between councils, water companies, the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency, all of which operate on different assessments of risk? Perhaps the Secretary of State will clarify that point.
	Drainage is assessed as adequate when it deals with one in 10 year events; river flood defences are expected to be proof against one in 100 year events. When will the Department insist that those be brought into line, while, we hope, clearly taking account of what is happening because of climate change? When will the Department ensure that there is a proper map of drainage and sewerage systems that are poorly maintained or otherwise inadequate?
	It is already clear that official assessments of river flooding are now woefully behind reality. For example, the new £23 million flood defence on the River Chelt at Cheltenham was meant to be proof against events once in every hundred years, yet it has been over-topped not once but twice in three weeks. On that reckoning, either the Environment Agency has to redo its sums or Cheltenham need not expect another flood for 200 years. Will the Secretary of State now review all existing provisions and future ones as, clearly, the greater likelihood of flooding means that many more schemes will pass the Government's investment threshold?
	The Prime Minister, whom I am delighted to see in his place, has to take particular responsibility for the Government's flood failures, as he was the person who cut the flood defence budget by £14 million last summer. There is no point in saying that the capital budget was not affected; those are weasel words. The truth is that the overall flood defence budget was cut and effecting feasibility studies meant that capital projects are likely to be delayed. If he doubts that, I suggest he talks to some of the people involved with the flood board in Yorkshire and Humberside.
	The local flood boards were asked only last month to plan for real-terms cuts for the next three years. Even after the Yorkshire floods, the Treasury conceded only that the flood defence budget should be boosted in 2010—as the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) said—while saying nothing about the next two years of the spending plans.
	I heard the Secretary of State say that we should wait for the comprehensive spending review, but surely the urgency of the situation demands that we get some clarity about the Government's intentions earlier than that. Is it not time that the Government recognised the urgency of the threat posed by climate change?

Bill Wiggin: In Herefordshire, particularly, and in Worcestershire, these summer floods are the worst in living memory. My own car was flooded, and I had to carry my daughter to safety on my shoulders through chest-deep water. The Secretary of State asks for suggestions about what could be done. The people of Tenbury Wells in my constituency have been flooded three times, twice in the past week. I do not what the answer is for them, but I do know that he can look again at his plans for the single farm payment, because the fields that are flooded were full of crops, and if he could get at least 80 per cent. to the farming community before Christmas, he would have a tremendous impact on what is going to happen to the rural community.

Paul Holmes: I thank the Minister for advance sight of the Green Paper, although as I had 55 minutes to read 128 pages I am sure that I will have missed some of the detailed nuances of policy. I have a few points on which I request clarification.
	I want, first, to welcome the intent of the Green Paper. At last, after 10 years, the Government recognise the scale of the housing crisis over which they have presided: with 71 per cent. home ownership—the highest rate in Europe—our market is under-supplied with land and houses and overheated in terms of demand and reckless mortgage lending. We approach the dangers of another wave of negative equity, such as we experienced in the '80s and early '90s. Mortgage debt is up 150 per cent., people are falling behind on mortgages at a rate double that of last year, and repossessions have trebled since last year. That is just the start: 2 million people on fixed-term mortgages with low interest rates will experience a hike in rates in the next 18 months. First-time buyers and key workers cannot get on to the housing ladder in 93 per cent. of urban areas. The Minister spoke of the highest rate of building for 17 years, but she failed to point out that that is from a record low base, with the 2001 rate one of the lowest on record.
	If the ownership crisis was due to Government neglect, the rented housing crisis is directly due to dogmatic Government policy. In the past 10 years, the Government have ended council house building and starved councils of funds, despite tenants' choice to stay with the council. Housing associations have managed to build only half the stock that is needed to replace right-to-buy losses, and only about a third of what the Barker review says is needed. The result is that waiting lists have soared from 1 million to 1.6 million.
	We welcome the Green Paper's proposed increases in social housing, but will the Minister confirm that despite all the media trailing by her and by the Prime Minister, the small print means more of the same for the 140 councils whose tenants have democratically chosen to stay with them? Will she confirm that the small print says that any extra money will go to housing associations and 60 arm's length management organisations, and that just a small number of councils will be able to launch partnerships with the private sector on the basis of special Government selection? Will she confirm that it is still proposed to rob the 140 councils that have retained their housing stock of 75 per cent. of right-to-buy money, and that most of those councils will lose up to an average of 25 per cent. of their council rents, whereas a housing association taking over that stock would be allowed to keep the entire sum? The housing and regeneration Bill is supposed to put tenants at the heart of social housing; why, then, in the Green Paper, is the Minister ignoring and punishing those very tenants for exercising their democratic choice to stay with the council as landlord?
	The Barker review said that 56,000 new social houses a year would be needed if we were to make any impact on the growing waiting list for social housing. Currently, housing associations have managed an average of about 25,000 houses a year. The Green Paper proposes an increase, by 2011, to only 45,000. Will the Minister explain such poverty of ambition after all the hype, in the face of desperate housing need?
	On sustainability—[Hon. Members: "Come on."]

Paul Holmes: Will the Minister say why councils are not allowed to set higher environmental energy standards for private developments, as they are on affordable housing? That gives private developers an unfair financial advantage over affordable builders and produces fewer sustainable buildings. Why is the Government's aim for all new houses to be zero-carbon by only 2016, when a target of 2011 is perfectly attainable in this country and has already been achieved in Germany?
	Finally, will the Minister explain why, despite all the talk at other times in recent weeks of restoring democracy and autonomy to local authorities, the Green Paper represents the imposition of yet more central control, with the Government dictating what houses will be built, where, by which councils and in partnership with whom? Why not simply restore autonomy to local authorities? Why not allow them to decide what they will build in their areas and get the benefit from that, and restore financial control to them?

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend will agree that affordable private rented housing is important, but we ensure that it is both affordable and of an appropriate quality. I have particular concerns about some of the investment that is not buy to let, but buy to leave, whereby flats or new developments are left empty as a result of investors or speculators sitting on properties. Local councils should think carefully about using some of their empty homes powers to bring some of those properties back into use. They have the powers to do so, but we are looking at more incentives as part of the Green Paper to support that.

Adrian Bailey: I welcome my hon. Friend's statement and the increase in funding for housing. My area has a thriving private sector market, mostly on brownfield site, and a successful ALMO, which has hugely improved the number of decent homes, but there is still an acute shortage of social housing. Will she ensure that there are new models of working between local authorities, ALMOs, housing associations and funders such as local building societies to assess housing need and secure the models that will deliver those houses for people?

Mark Francois: I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. This White Paper is long overdue. We have before us a treaty of fundamental importance to the nature of the European Union and Britain's relationship with it. It is two years since the original EU constitution was rejected by French and Dutch voters, during which time the Government were largely notable for their silence. They have shown determination only in keeping the House and voters in the dark.
	On the nature of what is set to be agreed by the intergovernmental conference, does the Minister agree with the Irish Prime Minister, who says that the new treaty is 90 per cent. the same as the constitution, or the Spanish Foreign Minister, who said yesterday that it is 98 per cent. the same? Does he agree with the Danish Prime Minister, who said that
	"all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters—the core—is left"?
	Or does he agree with the German Chancellor, who said:
	"The fundamentals of the Constitution have been maintained in large part"?
	Even if he disagrees with the leaders of other EU countries, will the Minister confirm what members of his own Government have said about the treaty? Was not the then Foreign Secretary and current Lord Chancellor right when he said that if the treaty contained an EU President and EU Foreign Minister, it would effectively be the constitution, or does the treaty not create an EU President and an EU Foreign Minister? Was not the Trade Minister—Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham, to give him his full title—right when he said:
	"This is a con to call this a treaty—it's not. It's exactly the same—it's a Constitution."
	If the Minister will not take it from those two ministerial colleagues, will he take it from his own Prime Minister, who, when asked at an Anglo-Irish press conference last week what he had been discussing, replied:
	"The Taoiseach and I have had a meeting this morning. We have discussed the European constitution and how that can move forward".
	If even the Prime Minister can no longer keep up the pretence that the treaty is not a constitution, why is the Minister for Europe still bothering?
	The Minister has pointed to one line in paragraph 1 of the IGC mandate to show that the constitutional concept is, as he put it, "abandoned". What he did not read out to the House, however, was the very next sentence, which states that the new treaty
	"will introduce into the existing Treaties, which remain in force, the innovations...from the 2004 IGC, as set out below in a detailed fashion."
	In other words, the constitution has essentially been brought back, but the name has just been changed. Was that not exactly the deal that the German presidency set out in its report of 14 June, which referred to
	"Avoiding...the symbolism and the title 'Constitution'"
	while
	"the substance of the Constitutional Treaty...should be preserved"?
	The simple truth is this: the Government's main aim has been re-label the constitution and hide how that has been done in the small print so that they can get out of their promise of a referendum. Is not that why the former Italian Prime Minister and current Home Minister said that the new treaty was "unreadable", adding that the
	"UK prime minister...can go to the Commons and say, 'Look, you see, it's absolutely unreadable, it's the typical Brussels treaty, nothing new, no need for a referendum.'"
	Will the Government seek changes to the IGC mandate, or do they regard the current text as inviolable? When will an English text be available, given that the treaty has been published today only in French? Will the Minister confirm that an English text will be available to the House before we rise for the summer recess?
	Does the Minister accept the opinion of legal experts that the new wording on competition seriously weakens the EU's commitment to free and open competition? Should not the old wording in fact be restored?
	Does the Minister share the concern that the new treaty, for the first time, potentially subordinates national Parliaments to EU institutions? Will he ensure that the wording of the relevant clause on that point is changed from "shall" to "may"? Will the Government support the Czech proposals for a new mechanism for member states to take back powers from the EU where that is appropriate?
	As the IGC will take be held in the summer recess, how will the House of Commons have genuine input into the process? I understand that the Foreign Affairs Committee, whose Chairman is in his place, has asked Ministers to appear before it during the recess. Has that offer been accepted and, if so, what are the dates for the scheduled hearings?
	Is not the Minister just a tad concerned that the so-called red lines are falling to pieces after only a couple of weeks' scrutiny? On the first red line—the charter of fundamental rights—is the Minister worried that Advocate-General Tizzano of the European Court of Justice thinks that no legal safeguard on the charter of fundamental rights will work if it is made legally binding, as the Government have agreed? Has he seen yesterday's opinion from the Swedish Prime Minister that
	"it should be stressed that the UK was given a clarification, not an opt-out."?
	Why has that red line already been downgraded from covering any change to UK law in any way simply to cover existing labour and social legislation? So that line is collapsing already.
	On the second red line regarding criminal justice, can the Minister explain why it will no longer be intergovernmental, but subject to the European Court of Justice's jurisdiction when the Government specifically blocked that, with our support, in the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice? Can he explain why our national veto has been downgraded to only an opt-in?
	On the third red line regarding the independence of our foreign policy, does the Minister share the apparent concern of the legal adviser to the European Scrutiny Committee that, because the safeguard on foreign affairs is only a non-legally binding declaration, it may be meaningless?
	On the fourth red line regarding taxation, which we have argued all along was put up as a red herring, has the Minister seen the BBC Europe editor, Mark Mardell's blog of 6 July?  [ Interruption. ] Labour Members should listen to this; it refers to their Government. He said of that red line:
	"The Government have the good grace to privately admit it was a bit of a con and was purely presentational."
	So there are vital issues at stake, even outside of the so-called red lines themselves.
	Can the Minister explain why the Government now support a single legal personality for the EU, when the then Prime Minister boasted all along that he had blocked what he called "this potentially damaging proposal" at Amsterdam? Importantly, can he confirm that the ratchet clause, which would allow further centralising treaty changes without the need for an intergovernmental conference, is still in?
	In the 2004 White Paper, the Government claimed that the constitution did not fundamentally change the EU. Now, they say that the constitution would have fundamentally changed the EU, but that the new treaty does not. If Ministers now admit that they were wrong then, why should we—

Angus Robertson: In welcoming the White Paper, which has much to commend it, I am intrigued by the four UK Government pre-conditions listed in chapter 3, including the
	"protection of the UK's common law system,"
	which is a sloppy and embarrassing drafting error that will find no friends in the Scots legal system. May I draw the Minister's attention to concerns in Scotland about the previous draft constitution and the inclusion of the common fisheries policy as an exclusive competence? Will he continue the recent discussions between the UK and Scottish Governments to ensure that the appropriate IGC conclusions for all the nations of the UK and the European Union?

George Galloway: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, for your earlier remarks.
	I want to begin by apologising to the House for the fact that the important business that was transacted before we came to this matter necessarily had to be truncated because this is going to be a significant piece of business that must finish at 10 o'clock. Thus hon. Members who wished to speak on the devastating flooding that is inundating their constituencies were not called or had to be more succinct than they would have preferred. The great issue of public housing, which is the flagship of the new Labour Prime Minister's first term—at least I hope it is his first term—had to be dealt with in a very perfunctory manner because of the other business that awaited. We have dealt with the important issue of intergovernmental relations within the European Union. We have had the happy occasion of the entry into the House of two new Members, just as one long-serving Member is about to go out the door. It just goes to show that as one door opens another one shuts.
	I apologise for the fact that after this mighty labour, which has brought forth really quite a little mouse, we now have to spend four hours, as we shall, discussing this matter. There was no trace of irony in the report. I suspect that that is because British baronets do not do irony, or at least not very well, and that there will not be much trace of irony in the speech that is to follow mine. Once the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had decided, as he said not once but six times in his report, that, in the course of a four-year investigation described by the Committee as being of unprecedented length and complexity, he had found no evidence of any personal gain by me, this whole story became a dispute about the funding of political campaigns. Being lectured by the current House of Commons on the funding of political campaigns is like being accused of having bad taste by Donald Trump or being accused of slouching by the hunchback of Notre Dame. This House stands in utter ill repute on the question of the funding of political campaigns.
	I shall develop that argument later. Suffice, for the moment, to say this. The police found a document with a list of secret lenders to the Labour party, every single one of whom was nominated either for a "K" or for what Lord Levy described as a "big P". This Parliament is stuffed full of political parties who were in turn stuffed full of secret loans and donations from millionaires or billionaires. None of the parties here—all three of them are culpable, a matter to which I shall return—ever asked the millionaires and billionaires who gave and lent them money where they got the money from. I am tempted to give just one example. Richard Desmond is a substantial benefactor to the Labour party. Did the treasurer of the Labour party ask Richard Desmond from which part of his considerable wealth he was donating handsomely to new Labour's coffers? Did the treasurer of the Labour party—I apologise to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for the language that I am about to use—ask if Mr. Desmond was giving from the profits of "Spunk-Loving Sluts", "Asian Babes", XXX pornographic television, or the profits of the  Daily Star—

George Galloway: Mr. Speaker, Dr. David Kelly was a civil servant who could not defend himself, and look what happened to him. Are we really saying that an important official of the British state, who has conducted a four-year inquiry into me, cannot be criticised because of the position that he holds? That will not seem tenable to the public in the country. It might pass muster here, although not, I suspect, with everyone, but it surely cannot be the case that I cannot develop my criticism of the commissioner's inquiry into me, because I am gagged as far as mentioning the commissioner—the man who carried out the inquiry.
	I am sorry that those things are causing you difficulties, Mr. Speaker, but I am now 18 minutes into my speech and have barely been able to get started with the critique that I want to make of the way in which I have been treated. I am, after all, being excluded from Parliament. It is not a small thing. I am, after all, about to face the situation in which my constituents' Member of Parliament is banished from the building—a building in which I have sat for 20 years. I really would like to explain why I believe that I have been treated unjustly. I promise that the public will not understand the attempt to shield people from criticism, when I am the one who is being excluded from Parliament.
	If I may continue; in one of life's delicious little ironies, the parliamentary commissioner turns out—I am grateful to  The Daily Telegraph for this—to have once been the principal private secretary of the present Lord Hurd, who, in the 1980s, sat on the sofa with Saddam Hussein, helping to facilitate, as you will remember, Mr. Speaker, having been here with me, the supergun. Remember it—the arms to Iraq affair? That was the period in which the British Government were best friends with Saddam Hussein and I was outside the Iraqi embassy in London, demonstrating for human rights and democracy. That was the first of the ironies, but it is not the last.
	The commissioner is commended in the report for the assiduous way in which he conducted his inquiry, but yesterday we could discover in  The Guardian that Mr. Andrew Murray, the chairman of the Stop the War coalition, which organised the massive demonstrations of millions of people in London, and the communications officer of Britain's mightiest union, UNITE, which was formed through the merger of the engineers' union and the Transport and General Workers Union, of which I had the honour to be a member in good standing for 33 years—a very considerable figure in the land—was not interviewed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. That was despite the fact that he was a founder of the Mariam appeal, an officer of the Mariam appeal and a trustee of the Mariam appeal. He was never interviewed by the commissioner, who either interviewed or sought to interview every other person who held such positions. Why did he not interview Andrew Murray as part of his inquiry, which was so assiduous, long and complex? Was it because Mr. Murray would have been able, as he did in  The Guardian, to set him right about a few things? I believe that that was the reason. The only alternative reason is incompetence, inefficiency and inattention to detail. I am sure that you would not like me to draw that conclusion, Mr. Speaker.
	I fell out badly with the parliamentary commissioner—very badly. I am going to develop the reasons why, and when I have finished, even if they cannot say so, many hon. Members will be sympathetic to the position in which I found myself. I fell out with the parliamentary commissioner when I read the transcript showing how he fawned on one of the witnesses, Mr. Tony Zureikat—about whom much more later. I am attacked in the report for having criticised Tony Zureikat as a malevolent fantasist. When I have finished bringing to the attention of the House what Mr. Zureikat said, which I demonstrated beyond contradiction to be lies, hon. Members will understand why I described him as a malevolent fantasist. Yet one of the reasons I am being suspended this evening is that I so robustly pursued his lies, and debunked them, to the point that every time I debunked a lie the witness was described by the commissioner more and more as peripheral. "Peripheral" was the word that he used; but it turns out in the end that such witnesses—and there are more—were not peripheral, because they were used as corroborators of the central charge against me, on the subject of the political funding of the Mariam appeal campaign.
	Even more seriously, I fell out with the parliamentary commissioner over the missing part of the transcript of my discussion with him. It turns out that I was right about that, at least if I read correctly the feint—the sleight-of-hand—reference to it in the report. Let me tell you, Sir, what happened. In my meeting with the parliamentary commissioner, the subject of the so-called minute of my meeting with Saddam Hussein in August 2003 was being discussed. I asked for the provenance of that minute. Miss Alda Barry, a civil servant of unimpeachable integrity, whom I have known in this House for 20 years, said that apparently there was a tape recording of the meeting. Yet when I received the transcript there was no reference to a tape recording of the meeting in it. I asked the commissioner over and over again why the reference was not in the transcript. "Why don't you ask," I said, "Miss Barry, a person of unimpeachable honesty, whether she said it, and if she tells you that she said it, why don't you now insert it into the transcript?" Answer came there none. So far as I am aware, Miss Barry was never asked whether she had said what I know she said, what she knows she said, and what the commissioner must know she said. Why was that not in the transcript? I suspect that it was not there because it was not convenient, because there was and is no tape recording. Therefore it was highly inconvenient for a senior civil servant like her to have said that there might be a tape recording of the meeting.
	There is much more of that in the report, when we get to it, but I ask hon. Members honestly to reflect: if something important had been said at a meeting with the parliamentary commissioner where you were the accused, but it was not in the transcript despite your repeatedly asking—accepting that stenographers can make mistakes—that the person who said it should be asked whether she said it, and, if she did, that it should be inserted in the transcript, how would you feel about the person responsible for the omission? I suspect that you would be as angry about it as I am. Yet, as I have said, in the final report it is acknowledged that Miss Barry made the comment—but by sleight of hand, so as in no way to exculpate me of my criticism of the commissioner for its omission. The Committee wants to have its cake and eat it: to set the record straight with an en passant remark that would, if I had not adverted to it this evening, not even have been noticed, but still to condemn me for criticising the commissioner who left the remark out in the first place.
	Even more serious is this: the commissioner said to me, "There was an employee of the Mariam appeal by the name of E. Laing. She was paid £13,000. Do you know who she was?" I said, "No. I have no idea. I've never heard of E. Laing". "Let me put to you", he said, "the suggestion"—although allegation would have been the correct English word, because the suggestion of an illegal act is an allegation—"that E. Laing is your former wife, Elaine Galloway", who happens to be a respected civil servant working in Her Majesty's Treasury across the road. The point was that the name "E. Laing" on a cheque could easily be altered to the name "Elaine Galloway". In other words, the suggestion was that she and I had been involved in what can only be described as a criminal conspiracy to defraud of £13,000.
	When I asked the commissioner who made that suggestion, he said, "I have forgotten". I ask you, Mr. Speaker, and every Member here to search their hearts on this. Does anyone really believe that a Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards involved in a four-year investigation of a Member of Parliament can hear a suggestion of criminal behaviour against that Member of Parliament and then forget who made that suggestion? I put it to you that it is impossible that he forgot the person who made that allegation. Only if he was a bungling nincompoop could he have forgotten who made that suggestion or, more properly, allegation. I am sure that you would pull me up if I were to describe Sir Philip as a bungling nincompoop, Mr. Speaker.
	It turned out that E. Laing was the personal assistant of the director of the Mariam appeal, who told the commissioner that he did not know who E. Laing was—I will come to that later. It turned out that E. Laing was paid, perfectly properly, by the director of the Mariam appeal as his personal assistant, but that that was just not the name by which she was commonly known.
	Did the commissioner apologise to me for the suggestion that I had been involved in a criminal fraud? No. Was I irredeemably angry with the commissioner about the episode thereafter? Yes I was, and so would any of you be. If any of you were asked such a question—if any of you were implicitly accused so unjustly and in such a way—you would be as angry about the person who made the allegation as I was. You would be even angrier when he did not have the courage to tell you either who made the suggestion or that he could not have told you the name. That would have been perfectly acceptable. If he had said, "Well I'm not able to divulge the identity of the person who made the suggestion", that would have been a perfectly defensible position. But to claim that he had forgotten who made the suggestion made me very angry indeed.
	The commissioner also ambushed me with documents. He had had two days notice of them before my meeting with the Committee, but he sprung them on me at the meeting in a coup de théâtre—his Perry Mason moment. That made me angry, too.
	Even more serious than anything that I have said so far, however, is that the commissioner claimed that he was involved in an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial inquiry; and yet he refused point blank, over and over again—a refusal endorsed by the Committee—to pursue the existence of forged documents about me that emerged in Baghdad in the very same week and in the very same city, and which passed through the hands of a journalist from the very same newspaper,  The Daily Telegraph. I refer to the forged documents published by  The Christian Science Monitor and almost published by  The Mail on Sunday in England. By the way, Mr. Speaker, those documents looked really authentic. They were on proper headed notepaper, with the right margins and the right terms, and were written in the correct style and signed by the correct people. The documents even almost got it right about my whereabouts vis-à-vis Iraq, on the dates that they suggested that I had gone to lift $20 million personally in cash, corruptly, given to me by two sons of Saddam Hussein. Those documents were very plausible and convincing. They emerged in the same week, in the same city, in the hands of the same newspaper— The Daily Telegraph—that published the infamous stories about me.
	Not only that, but the identity of the man who gave the documents to  The Christian Science Monitor and to  The Mail on Sunday is known. His picture was in the paper and his address is known to our men in Baghdad in the embassy. The commissioner steadfastly refused to inquire as to why that general had either constructed those forgeries himself or passed them on to newspapers and on to Philip Smucker, the journalist concerned—a  Daily Telegraph stringer who worked also for  The Christian Science Monitor.
	I asked the commissioner to send our people from the embassy to interview that general and ask him on whose behalf those forgeries had been produced and why that had been done. The commissioner said that he would not do so, because those forged documents were not in the complaint filed by the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), even though the same commissioner went on, for almost four years, to examine and inquire into practically everything other than Mr. Blaby's complaint.
	I said, "It must be relevant that forgeries about me were produced". We know that they were forgeries. The newspapers concerned accepted that they were forgeries. Harvard university tested the ink on the documents and proved that they there forgeries. That was possible in the case of those documents because, unlike  The Daily Telegraph documents, to which I shall return, they were original documents and not photocopies or, later, faxes. It is inconceivable that a man carrying out an inquisitorial examination of such an important affair would not even try to find out who was responsible for the forgeries against a Member of this House. In fact, it is inconceivable to me that when those forgeries were exposed such a man would not have wanted to know why a Member of this House was the victim of such a conspiracy.
	It is sometimes said, and was said by members of the Committee—I hear them saying it now, sotto voce—"Oh, as far as you're concerned it's just a big conspiracy". But we know that there was a conspiracy. It is not an allegation by me—we know that there was a conspiracy. The documents were published in  The Christian Science Monitor and almost elsewhere—I stopped the presses at the last possible minute, only by giving my passports to the editor of  The Mail on Sunday, for which I then worked, to prove that I could not have been in Iraq on some of the dates on which it was suggested I had lifted that money.
	It is inconceivable that anyone carrying out an inquisitorial investigation would not seek to investigate examples of parallel behaviour, yet the commissioner refused to do so on the utterly fatuous ground that they were not covered by the complaints made by the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). He clung to the credibility of witnesses whom I have proven to be telling lies. He accused me in his report of not co-operating, yet Members who can bear to do so can go through his correspondence with me and not find a single trace of unhappiness on his part about the level of my co-operation. Indeed, as late as the end of last year, he was thanking me, and he was not just grateful, he was "very grateful" for the way in which I was co-operating with him. The truth is that, because they found no evidence of personal gain by me, they switched the goalposts and made an attack on my conduct in defending myself too successfully through the course of this inquiry, driving liars' evidence to the periphery, where they now claim that it rests.
	The commissioner claimed that there was a discrepancy in my account in  The Mail on Sunday of my meeting with Saddam Hussein in August 2003. He had to drop that, once I had drawn to his attention my book, which I had given him on the date of publication, in which I laid out exactly the circumstances of who was present and who was not at my meeting with Saddam Hussein. However, he claimed that there was a discrepancy that never was.
	The commissioner even said that there was a discrepancy in my attitude to the  Telegraph documents, to which I shall return—I told you this was going to have to be a long speech. Those documents were never an issue in the libel case against  The Daily Telegraph. Throughout, the commissioner had more faith in  The Daily Telegraph's documents than  The Daily Telegraph did. If  The Daily Telegraph had had any confidence in its photocopied documents, it would have made them its defence in the trial, but it did not do so because it knew that that would fail. There is no discrepancy at all in how I have described those documents. I said at the time, and I still say now, that those documents are either forgeries or an example of someone corruptly doing business in Iraq behind my back, without my knowledge and using my name. I say, as I said on the first day, that there is no discrepancy here. I said on the first day that, whatever the case, whoever produced the documents, whenever they produced them and for whatever reason, the information in them is false. There is no discrepancy in that at all.

George Galloway: I have spent 10 hours on live phone-in radio this week, in front of hundreds of thousands of listeners— [Interruption.] My pay is in the Register of Members' Interests—I thought the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) was a friend of mine; it appears that he has joined the legions.
	There were 10 hours of live radio, with hundreds of thousands of listeners, and I am here to tell you, in case you do not know, Mr. Speaker, that this report has sunk like a stone and has no credibility among the general public. It is popular in here, I can tell, but it has no credibility among the general public, in part because they suspect that which I am trying to prove to them, if I am able to develop my case.
	I am not able to say who leaked the report, Mr. Speaker, because of your ruling and your threat to name me, so I can only say this: it was leaked. I wrote to the Chairman of the Committee complaining about the leak. He replied to me without reference to the fact that it had been leaked. I then replied to him to say how outrageous it was that he had not even referred to the leak, at which point he wrote to me again saying, "I am instituting an inquiry into the leak." But of course the story was leaked on the Sunday before polling day in a by-election in which my party was a contestant.
	I just ask you this, and ask you and other Members, Mr. Speaker, to answer it honestly in their hearts: would this Committee have published such a report against the leader of the Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat parties two days before polling day in a by-election in London? Every one of you knows that it would not. A kind of freemasonry would apply, and we know about that, Mr. Speaker, you and me— [Laughter.] Of course we know it as victims, not as practitioners of those black arts; we know it as those who have been on the end of their discrimination and bigotry. Does anyone really believe that if this report had been about the leaders of the other parties represented on the Committee, it would have been published two days before polling day? You all know in your hearts that it would not, and it would not therefore have been leaked on the Sunday before polling day.
	Now, Mr. Speaker, you will be glad to know that I intend to move on to the report. I warn the House that I have even more to say about that. I am going to start with—I suppose must call him the hon. Gentleman—the hon. Member for Blaby, on my left, who is moving around the House on manoeuvres, you might say. It was the hon. Gentleman who made the complaint against me. I have here the letter with which he made the complaint:
	"Further to our telephone conversation this afternoon, I note that you have yet to receive a request to investigate the extremely serious allegations made by the Daily Telegraph against George Galloway MP.
	Since serving in the last Gulf war in 1991, I have been very interested in the situation in Iraq ever since"—
	I apologise for his English. He is a soldier. I merely left school at 17, like you, Mr. Speaker, to go and work in a factory—

Andrew Robathan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. For clarification, when I was a member of the board of Indict, we had premises somewhere in South Lambeth—I cannot remember exactly where—and it was—

George Galloway: The verbal facility of the hon. Member for Blaby is not even as good as his written facility.
	I do not why anyone would want to deny it; everybody here knows that MPs use parliamentary resources for political campaigns. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Purchase), whom I respect very much, sent me a document this week in the internal post every word of which I agree with, and which I wholeheartedly support, on the campaign against city academies. I hope I have not got him into trouble. Everybody in here knows that every Member involved in a political campaign uses parliamentary facilities in part, whether they have an office somewhere in South Lambeth or not.

George Galloway: The right hon. Lady shakes her head; that is even more extraordinary. She was the chairman of Indict. If she is going to claim that Indict never once used parliamentary facilities, I will risk being named by you, Mr. Speaker, because no one in their right mind could believe that the campaign that the hon. Lady led for years never once used parliamentary facilities in pursuit of its objectives.

George Galloway: I am more grateful for that intervention than the hon. Lady can imagine. It now turns out that the organisation of which the complainant was a member was funded not by one foreign country but by several, and so handsomely that it could afford to employ seven people in an office just across the river. How extraordinary that is.

Kevin Barron: I shall be brief because I do not have much to add to the contribution of the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, on which I have sat since the general election of 2005, in terms of the conduct of the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway). I wish to put into context his case for the defence. He brought up an event that occurred in 1990, when I spoke out having read an internal report of the National Union of Mineworkers about the misapplication of funds by its then president, Arthur Scargill. As a consequence of my speaking out and the internal report, nearly £750,000 was returned to the NUM, although many millions of pounds remain today in foreign bank accounts. I know not what will become of that.
	I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman brought that issue up. He suggested that I was some sort of emissary of Robert Maxwell. I met Robert Maxwell on two occasions, when I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition in the 1980s, and that was probably two occasions more than I would have wished to meet him. I have never been his mouthpiece, nor indeed anybody's mouthpiece, in this place, and it is not worthy to make such a case for the defence. It is a great shame that the hon. Gentleman is not here to hear that.
	None of us goes away without being touched by events when we are on Committees. I chair the Select Committee on Health, and Committee members are touched by events, by witnesses' accounts and by the evidence that is given. Some of the case for the defence that we have heard today is not credible—it never has been—and I would urge hon. Members to read the evidence that was put before the Committee before reaching the conclusion that it was credible.
	The hon. Gentleman brought in a series of events that had little to do with how we found against him in the report and what we found. The standard of proof was the right one, because the Committee is not a criminal court. This case does raise issues in relation to the criminal court, which those who investigate criminal matters ought perhaps to look at, but that is certainly not something that the Standards and Privileges Committee did, and nor did the commissioner—he does not work to that level. No matter what the standard of proof, however, there was no question but that the hon. Gentleman had got money indirectly from the oil-for-food programme, and I do not think that anybody can question that, given the evidence before us in the report. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman solicited that money from Mr. Zureikat—not Tony Zureikat, and I would agree with some of the hon. Gentleman's analysis of him as an individual—but Fawaz, his brother, which was a different thing altogether—[Hon. Members: "Cousin."] Sorry, his cousin. Fawaz Zureikat had a note of introduction from the hon. Gentleman so that he could go to Iraq and do the business as far as the Mariam appeal was concerned.
	As the Chairman said, the hon. Gentleman said on two occasions that he was wrong not to register, and he clearly should have done that. However, although he said that he felt that he was wrong on two occasions, he has not done so since the report was published last Tuesday and he has not done so again in the House today. The Committee's recommendation, which is before the House today, is that he apologise to the House and be suspended from its service for 18 sitting days. I have not yet heard whether we will get to vote on the 18 days now, but I would genuinely like to think that the hon. Gentleman will come to terms with the House and how it protects people's freedom of speech. It has protected mine in the past and it will protect his if what he says is well intended, although I do not think that that we are there yet as far as he is concerned.

Theresa May: I wish to make only a few brief remarks on this matter. It is always with great regret that the House debates motions that relate to the standard of behaviour of a Member, and it does so only after a proper process of investigation, first, obviously, by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and then by the members of the Committee on Standards and Privileges. In this case, those processes have been properly followed and both the commissioner and the Committee have come to their decisions after a considerable period of investigation and consideration.
	The members of the Committee are drawn from the House; they are our peers. We appoint them, we ask them to do this job, and we are grateful to them for undertaking this work on our behalf. I entirely refute the suggestions made by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) that they conduct themselves with anything other than absolutely integrity in doing that job on our behalf.
	I should also like to pay tribute to Sir Philip Mawer, who has conducted himself in all his inquiries in his position as commissioner with both rigour and integrity. This was a lengthy and complex case, and he should be commended for his hard work and the commitment that he has shown to his task sometimes in the face of considerable provocation, as has been made clear by my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young).
	My right hon. Friend has properly explained how the Committee came to its decision on the charges made, and it is absolutely clear in the report and it has been made clear this evening that, although some of the charges could have been rectified by an apology, there was certain conduct by the hon. Gentleman that the Committee considered damaged the reputation of the House. I want to make a brief remark on that aspect.
	Self-regulation in the House works only as long as all hon. Members are willing to respect the process of scrutiny that has been established by the House. We ask the commissioner to do a job on our behalf. He can do that job only if we all comply with his requirements and are willing to submit ourselves to his inquiries when required to do so.
	I note that, in paragraph 352 of the report, the commissioner says:
	"I believe that any objective reading of the record of my correspondence and interviews with Mr. Galloway will show that he has consistently failed to live up to the expectation of openness and straightforwardness in responding to questions and in other dealings which is critical to the continued effectiveness of the House's self-regulatory conduct regime."
	The reputation of the House depends on our willingness and ability to undertake that self-regulatory regime properly. The Committee has clearly found that, in failing to meet the standards required, the hon. Gentleman brought that process into disrepute and damaged the reputation of the House. I certainly intend to support the motion tonight and encourage all hon. Members to do so.

Bridget Prentice: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
	The Bill has now been carefully debated both here and in the other place, and I think that we can safely say that it is a shining example of cross-party co-operation to tackle the dreadful problem of people who are forced to marry. I therefore want to put on record again my thanks both to the Opposition for providing time for the Bill to be debated in the House and to the Liberal Democrats—in particular, Lord Lester—for introducing the Bill in the other place and working so hard to secure its passage there. With the noble lord's help the Government substantially redrafted the Bill, and when it came here, we adopted it as our own. In this House, we have secured support on both sides for a Bill that will provide much-needed help for the young women—and indeed some men—who find themselves forced to marry. The Bill will go a long way towards tackling that pernicious practice. The cross-party support for the Bill has been critical in ensuring that progress.
	On Second Reading and in Committee, there were great debates on some of the most important issues raised by the Bill. It was sensible and proper that those aspects were discussed further. I will comment on one or two of the issues. There was concern that there was not sufficient consultation with stakeholders. The Government, through the forced marriage unit, have been engaged with key stakeholders since the unit was established in 2005 and we also consulted on forced marriage—including whether it should be made a criminal offence—in 2005. A wide-ranging and varied group of stakeholders responded to that consultation.
	Lord Lester, who sponsored the Bill in another place, consulted on making changes to his original Bill in February this year. Again, those who responded were wide-ranging and included experts in the field, non-governmental organisations, charities dealing with forced marriage casework, faith groups and other interested individuals. Lord Lester himself has worked with the Southall Black Sisters, which is a well-established, well-known and influential women's group working in London, as well as organisations such as Karma Nirvana in Derby and the Newham Asian Women's Project, both of which have been closely involved with the work of the forced marriage unit and have been consulted regularly.
	We also took it upon ourselves to consult a number of the family division judges, who regularly hear such cases, in order to ensure that the drafting of the legislation was appropriate. They made some helpful suggestions to improve the Bill's flexibility and I want to record my thanks to them for their contribution. In the run-up to the Lords Grand Committee, Baroness Ashton met a number of stakeholders, including Southall Black Sisters, Imkaan, Karma Nirvana, and Himat—a support group that meets the particular needs of south Asian gay and bisexual men. She also met Khatun Sapnara, a family law lawyer, who worked closely with Lord Lester in drafting the original Bill.
	I wholeheartedly agree with the points that have been made about strong community relations being key to the future success of the legislation once passed and, for that reason, I wanted to set out how important it was that we had met the different groups that have an interest in this area. In that respect, the work of the forced marriage unit, and other NGOs and charities, is critical and invaluable in raising awareness of the issue and highlighting access to support and assistance.
	The forced marriage unit, as I said in Committee, undertakes a great deal of publicity, outreach and awareness-raising work. Speeches are made at about 75 events every year. The unit runs a national publicity campaign involving radio, TV and the national and local press. As part of its two-year strategy, it will explore ways of making the outreach programme more targeted and focused on the hard-to-reach community groups and on older generations in communities that are affected by forced marriage. It is also focusing on building links with devolved Governments in the UK and with other Governments across Europe through participation in the EU Daphne-funded project, "Active Against Forced Marriage". The FMU contributes to the Foreign Office's overall work with overseas Governments to improve human rights, including tackling forced marriage and other forms of violence against women.
	The Bill is just one part of a much wider programme of work already under way to raise awareness of the problem of forced marriage and to protect women's rights in this area. It might be appropriate at this stage if I remind hon. Members that the Bill has been extended to Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Executive Committee considered the inclusion of Northern Ireland in the Bill on 24 May and agreed that it was content that Westminster should legislate on devolved matters on this occasion. Likewise the Northern Ireland Assembly debated and agreed a legislative consent motion on Monday 4 June.
	There was some concern during the debates about whether there should be criminal remedies for forced marriage. The Bill offers civil remedies. As I said on Second Reading, we consulted in 2005 on whether we should introduce criminal offences for forced marriage. The majority response from stakeholders and voluntary groups with great experience in the area was that going down the route of criminalisation might be seen to target and stigmatise certain ethnic and religious communities and would simply drive the practice underground, making the situation even worse for victims. Victims of forced marriage are often unwilling to take action against their parents, and many respondents felt that the legislation would simply not be used. So, we decided against criminalisation.
	I want to make it clear, however, that clause 63R of the Bill signposts the existing protection that is available under criminal law as well as under other civil legislation. That includes the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court, the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Family Law Act 1996, a civil claim for damages, and an application under the Children Act 1989. The clause also makes it clear that the Bill will not prevent a person from seeking a remedy provided in other areas of law. So, when a crime is committed as part of a strategy designed to force someone to marry, it should be reported to the police and can be prosecuted in the normal way.
	The primary purpose of the Bill, however, is preventive. It is aimed at protecting the victim from being forced into marriage. Nevertheless, there are some cases in which the victim may wish to seek additional remedies, such as making a civil claim for damages—in cases where she could do so anyway. The clause makes it clear that nothing in the Bill prevents such an application.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Delegated Legislation Committees),

Jim Knight: I thank the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) for raising such an important issue. The subject has generated a great deal of debate, some controversy and a lot of mythology. The hon. Gentleman has written to me and questioned me several times about the issue, so I welcome this opportunity to try to offer him further reassurance, although as he said the response was inadequate, he may have prejudged me.
	For some time, I have been keen to publish guidance on how the secure use of biometric technologies can support efficient school management, and we did so today. The guidance was produced in consultation with the Information Commissioner. Once the debate was announced, I was determined to have the guidance published by today so that the debate could be informed by it, and I am grateful to officials and to the commissioner for their co-operation in ensuring that we could do so. The guidance was produced on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency—the Government agency that leads our national drive to improve learning through technology. I have placed a copy of the guidance in the Library and it will soon be available on the BECTA website. The Information Commissioner has also produced a complementary statement, which I shall ensure is available on the commissioner's website. Furthermore, Members will have noticed the publication of a written ministerial statement on the subject today.
	The debate is driven by the legitimate need to ensure that the privacy of pupils is both respected and protected, but unfortunately it is characterised by some significant misconceptions and I hope that I can address them effectively today. It is important to clarify exactly what we mean by biometric data. The biometric element in this case, as the hon. Gentleman said, is an algorithmic representation of a fingerprint—not the recording of a fingerprint. It is extremely important that people understand that it is not the recording of a fingerprint, but the algorithmic representation of one.
	In plain English, the technology derives a unique numerical value from a fingerprint—a number to identify an individual pupil. Images of actual fingerprints are neither created, nor are they stored. The number is linked to basic identifying data about the pupil such as their name and form. That means that biometric data stored by schools is of no more practical use than that stored on the swipe-card system to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
	Biometric data is in common use for security and identification purposes; indeed, I have fingerprint recognition on my laptop. Some schools see biometric technology as a practical solution to some of the day-to-day issues they face. In a number of instances, schools may find it helpful and effective to collect and use biometric data.
	I have seen at first hand how such systems can help the running of schools—maintaining accurate attendance records, enabling cashless canteens to be introduced and maintaining accurate and efficient library records. Of course, as the hon. Gentleman said, there are alternative solutions for improving school management and administration, including the use of smartcards.
	Smartcards are not without their own issues, however, as I saw recently on a visit to a school in Harrow. As happens in many other schools, a child's family is charged £5 every time a card is lost, which is a common occurrence and £5 that many families can ill afford—it is clearly much more difficult to lose one's finger. Not only can swipe cards easily be lost or forgotten, they can also be swapped between pupils, causing a particular problem for maintaining accurate attendance records, which could put the education and safety of our children at risk.
	Using biometric data means that there are no cards to be lost. In addition, if the technology is used in the canteen, pupils no longer need to carry money, thus helping to reduce opportunities for bullying and theft. Cashless canteens, which can be facilitated by swipe cards, mean that it is not possible to tell who is receiving free school meals, thereby reducing stigma and increasing take-up.
	It is up to schools to decide whether any of those systems will work for them. We certainly do not advocate one technology over another, or technology for technology's sake. We want schools to adopt it where it makes sense for them. The hon. Gentleman refers to answers from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department that referred to the Education Act 2002. That Act enables governing bodies to do anything that is necessary or expedient for the purposes of, or in connection with, the conduct of the school or the provision of facilities or services. As a result, schools are free to use biometric technologies in the ways that I describe if they feel that it will help the school to run more smoothly, in accordance with data protection legislation and with regard to the guidance that we have issued.
	I want to turn now to the concerns that have been raised about the implications for privacy. There are several safeguards in place that I want to draw to the attention of the House. First, the Data Protection Act 1998 protects against the improper use of all types of data, including biometric data. As part of their responsibilities under the Act, schools have a duty to ensure that personal data are kept secure. Today's additional guidance will make it clear how the law relates to biometric data and advise schools on how to comply with it. By law, such data can only be used for their stated purpose; they cannot be shared with third parties beyond that stated purpose, and they must be destroyed when pupils leave their schools. Some have raised concerns about, for example, the police using such data. Not only do we know of no circumstance where biometric data have been used by the police, but they could only access the data as part of an investigation into a specific crime. There certainly can be no read-across to other databases.
	Schools already hold pupils' personal details. Information such as a pupil's address, date of birth and reports from social services are securely held as a matter of routine. I am sure that no one would argue that schools should not collect and store that information while pupils attend school. Many of those data are much more sensitive than an algorithmic number, generated by a fingerprint. Schools are used to holding such data securely and within the boundaries of the Data Protection Act 1998, and the introduction of biometric data does not represent a significant addition.
	Schools and local authorities are responsible for developing their own policies about the information that they wish to collect and hold, subject to relevant legislation on data protection and freedom of information. There have been calls for the Government to introduce further regulation specifically to clarify how biometric data can be collected and used. As I have stated, that is already covered by existing legislation and is not necessary. It would also go against the essential principle of giving governing bodies the freedom to manage their school as they see fit, free from unnecessary interference from Whitehall, which is something that hon. Members on both sides of the House keep asking me to bear in mind.
	Secondly, as I stated earlier, it is not possible to recreate a fingerprint using the numbers that are stored. The algorithm generates a unique number, producing no information of any use to identity thieves. I shall quote from a statement from the Information Commissioner's Office—a thoroughly independent source—that says in the third paragraph:
	"Full fingerprint images are not stored and cannot be generated ('reverse engineered') from the template."
	I hope that that is clear to all those listening, because it is an important reassurance on the points that the hon. Gentleman has made.
	Thirdly, pupils and, where appropriate, parents must be fully informed of the data collected and kept, through a fair processing notice, as part of the data protection legislation. No data can be collected without their knowledge. That is common sense and a central principle of the guidance that we will publish tomorrow.
	Fourthly, the use of biometric data in schools does not, as some say, edge us closer to a surveillance society any more than taking the register at the start of class ever has. By law, the data cannot be shared. There are no fingerprints to be handed to the police or stolen by anyone, nor any personal data that are not already held electronically by every school in the land.
	This is technology introduced for the benefit of our pupils and teachers. It is not "1984" by the backdoor. There are no sinister forces at work here, and I would argue that it is irresponsible to suggest otherwise to get some cheap headlines.
	I recognise, however, that although schools are acting legally and that all data collected will be handled in line with the Data Protection Act 1998, some parents may want further information. The guidance clearly lays out the legal position for schools. It advises head teachers on the practical and legal steps they need to follow if they decide to introduce the technologies. It will help schools to operate such systems, while respecting the wishes of pupils and parents who do not wish to participate. The guidance specifically recommends that schools give pupils and parents with genuine concerns the opportunity to opt out. Those who choose to do so should be offered an alternative means of accessing the same services. We have had some reassurance that the sorts of technology that might be used in the dining hall, the library, or for attendance could be interchanged with the use of swipe cards.
	The guidance also encourages schools to be open and clear with parents, providing straightforward information on the nature and use of biometric technologies through a fair processing notice. I understand parents' concerns if they believe that images of their children's fingerprints are being taken and stored. That is a perfectly legitimate concern and I am sure that many of the parents to whom the hon. Gentleman referred are raising exactly that concern. It needs to be made clear to them that that is not the case: images of fingerprints are not being kept or stored. An algorithmic number is being generated from those fingerprints that cannot be reverse engineered.
	I have seen how biometric data can have a very positive impact in schools. The technology does not put pupils' information at increased risk, nor does it imply a criminalisation of our children. It is the decision of the individual school, in consultation with parents, whether to introduce the technology. It is a way for head teachers to improve the administration and safety of their schools. For many, it may be common sense. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman about the use of biometric data in schools.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes to Ten o'clock.
	Correction
	 Official Report, 16 July 2007, in column 82, delete David Howarth from the Ayes.